Centipede By Rita Dove Summary

570 Words2 Pages

The poem, “Centipede” by Rita Dove, dramatizes the small fears overcoming the larger fears we may be experiencing in our life. The speaker of the poem, a daughter, tells us a story of her being in the basement and being frightened by a centipede. Without attention to detail the poem can be read as a one layered poem whose theme would be; little girls fear bugs. The theme in the poem is actually; the small things in life can easily distract oneself of the bigger problems occurring around them. The poem has no punctuation, which could tell us the speaker is a young child, who had just experienced this frightening situation and still has the adrenaline in her voice, causing the child to speed through her words allowing no punctuation within her speech. Even though there is no attention to gender within the poem, I infer that the speaker is a girl because she is holding on to her father’s arm and is frightened by an insect. …show more content…

This storm must have been a strong because it has clearly cut the power off from the house. The tone of the speaker in the first two lines sound surprisingly calm. There had been a storm that had just passed their town, which could have been life threatening, but the speaker seems to have a very calm routinely tone to her voice. The tone of the speaker may be calm for now, but the setting of the speaker heading to the basement with the power out is a known fright, especially to a little

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